Why I Am Not An Atheist, by Jim Baxter

To call someone an atheist is to suggest a definite attitude, even if that attitude is a negative one. To me it suggests a reaction against something, a rejection of a philosophy. And that certainly seems to be how many atheists present themselves. I don’t reject religion. Not really. Not f I’m being totally honest with you. It’s simply not something that means anything to me. Religion is something that I seldom notice. Sometimes of course the religious will tell me that I’ll notice all right when it is too late. That used to annoy me. Not now.

I know religion only as something other people have in their thoughts. I recognise that it is important to them and that it is for many something that is at the very centre of what they do and how they view the world and everything in it. But I have no reaction to it. It seldom even occurs to me that it's there. I am therefore not something that can be defined in terms of the absence of something that others have in their thinking. Nor am I interested, not any more anyway, in arguing about it.

Oh, I used to argue, and not that long ago either, sometimes just for the sake of continuing an argument that would change nobody’s views. I understand why some people who are happy to call themselves atheists get so worked up about those who refuse to see their ‘sense’. I understand them because I used to be one of them. And not that long ago either. Eventually even I had to recognise that I was no different from some religious people, by no means all, who become incensed when they are the ones to be disagreed with. These attitudes are not unique either to atheists or to religious people. They merely mark out intolerant people.

So, if I am an atheist it is only in the sense of fitting a dictionary definition of the word. Even then I would say that if I am an atheist of any kind then I am a ‘recovering atheist’. That doesn’t mean that I have moved any closer to having religious beliefs myself. I haven’t and I never will. Trust me on this. I’d say rather that my sympathies are now with the forgiving in all matters of faith, the meek in that regard. We shall inherit the Earth.

Hols

Blogging will be light this week, for I am off for a break. The wife and kids all look as though they need it.

Back soon. WW

The Irish may have spoken, but they are pissing in the wind

Springtime for Rompuy and Euroland, Winter for Ireland by Wrinkled Weasel

Dublin

The Irish elections have resulted in a catastrophic defeat for the ruling Fianna Fail party. The words "political annihilation" have been used to describe the defeat, which prompted a massive turnout of the electorate in the wake of large cuts in public services and tax increases. The measures, forced upon the Republic of Ireland by the EU/IMF bailout is apparently non-negotiable. One analyst says that the cost of servicing the debts incurred on the back of the banking crisis amounts to 85% of Ireland's income tax revenue.

What strikes me about this is that this was where the UK was headed when Gordon Brown was in power. To be fair, the global crisis in banking was headed off quite quickly and dare I say, efficiently, at least as compared to the Irish situation. Perhaps the key difference is not Gordon Brown, but the fact that we are not in the Eurozone, constrained to propping up a massive Ponzi Scheme.

Britain has used a number of levers to work the global problem on a domestic level. Inflation, the secret tax collector has done most of the work accompanied be devaluation. And it is the latter that has made all the difference. We are not in the Eurozone. We have not suffered by having an artificially high currency. We are, however, not immune. The UK has lost billions in the Irish Banking sector. RBS, which is mostly owned by the British Government and owns Ulster Bank, wrote off £1.16 Billion last year on bad Irish debt. Lloyds, in whom the British Government has a 43% stake, similarly wrote off £4.3 Billion.

So, although we may be thankful that we are not in the Euro currency fiasco, we are being affected and it will be taxpayer's who, as usual foot the bill, for there is no question that private bankers will be paying towards the crippling public debt in Ireland, nor is it likely that the change in government will affect the loan agreement with the EU.
The Irish people may have spoken, but it will change nothing. The lesson to be learned is that although the economic crisis is global, it has been unduly worsened by the madness of protecting the Euro.

Friday Driving Song

I have mentioned Michael Chapman before but you might have missed it. Three extraordinary albums, Rainmaker, Fully Qualified Survivor and Wrecked Again. He's still touring at the age of 70.

Another Country

Retford - Take Water and Sandwiches

By Wrinkled Weasel

Britons returning from strife-torn Libya have apparently made criticisms of the government's evacuation strategy. One man, a former career soldier, described the operation as "shambolic". He should know better. What was he doing in Libya in the first place?

It has always been a source of wry amusement to me that British Citizens who return from the Costa Del Sol or Retford, still complain about the funny food and the lack of the things they are used to. It is as if they do not understand that they are somewhere else. Wolfy, one of our writers did a piece about piracy (WW passim). The pirates will pick up anybody who looks vulnerable and take them as hostages, with a bit of torture on the side, just to maintain some pirate credibility.

When you go abroad, nay, when you step outside your door, you must assume some responsibility for your action. It is no use travelling to some terrible corner of the world, getting into trouble and then expecting someone to get you out of it. It adds insult to injury to then complain about it when they do.

Young Weasel went to Nepal last year to make a film and ended up being hijacked by Maoists. He was fine (he told me after the event). I knew, when Young Weasel announced his plans, that there could be some danger. I also knew that he posseses a certain amount of skill with people, courage and tenacity. It means that, although I was concerned, I felt that he was doing what he enjoyed most. Certainly, YW was aware that he was his own man and I am sure it never occurred to him that he was doing anything other than being very explicitly somewhere else.
You cannot travel any distance without taking account of your safety. If you do get into trouble, then perhaps people may be able to help, but first remember; nobody forced you to go and if you are surprised or shocked by what you find, and if you get tummy trouble or die horribly, you should be contemplating your options, not thrashing about expecting the nanny state to bail you out. And that applies whether you are in Rio or Retford.

Faking Good, Faking Bad

You Are What You Pretend To Be

by JIM BAXTER

Kurt Vonnegut wrote that. The words were spoken by a character in one of his books but it is quoted sometimes as though it were Vonnegut’s own philosophy and therefore great with wisdom. Shakespeare has Duncan say that there is no art to tell the mind’s construction in the face. People often quote that too, as wisdom, apparently ignorant of the context – that it was spoken by a man who was about to be murdered by a close associate whom he should have known better. That Shakespeare wrote the line doesn’t mean that he believed the philosophy. If he did he was a fool and that seems unlikely. Similarly, as a philosophy, the words spoken by Vonnegut’s character is complete rubbish, and that is not necessarily a reflection in itself on Vonnegut. It’s a common fallacy to assume that especially pithy aphorisms spoken by an author’s characters must be the opinions of the author, and this is not to invoke ‘literary theories’ such as deconstructionism  or other quintessentially French entertainments.

The ‘philosophy’, for now I must put sardonic makers around it, applies, in any case, only to attributes which are not readily testable. If I pretend to be a concert class cellist that doesn’t make me one and I can be found out soon enough. But I may be a nasty person and pretend to be kind and not be found out unless I am careless and let the mask slip.  If I pretend to be kind does that make me kind? What about the other way around? If I am an emotionally battered person who desperately wants to be liked I may pretend to be nasty, not because I truly am but because I wish to control the rejection from others that I have come to expect by causing it myself. Does that make me a nasty person or I am a really a kind person who just needs a little more understanding?

Well, no. You are not a kind person in that latter case. In that latter case you really are what you pretend to be because you are not pretending because it is all about you. When you do bad you are what you do if you are getting what you need. You are always what you do if what you do is bad and it makes you feel better about yourself or saves you from something.

If we are impatient, spiteful, irrational, needy, histrionic, selfish, thoughtless, self-regarding, and so many more things that are so much to be disliked then to the extent that we are those things those things are really us. We are not ‘under too much stress’, ‘having a bad day’, or ‘not really like that’. We really are like that. 

 In Robert Bolt’s, ‘A Man for All Seasons’, Thomas More is depicted as insulting some of his important friends when he knows that he himself is doomed. He does this for them, to make it easy for them, to save them from association with him if they choose to believe his insults, dislike him for them, and save themselves. That is what they do choose.

But then he is a saint. For most of us, you can be truly good, or if you’re bad enough you can fake good, but you can’t fake bad unless you are really good and you want to relieve people of the burden of liking you, entirely for their sake. Most people who behave badly do so entirely for themselves and their own precious opinions of their own worth, and the more they do it, the more they truly are the type of person who behaves badly. They truly are who not who they pretend to be but who they pretend to themselves not to be.

Mike Hurst's All Time Favourite Tracks

As Promised Mike Hurst's All Time Favourite Tracks

WAVELENGTHS 2

Thursday on WW - The man who produced this song

by Wrinkled Weasel

Later Today, the first part of my talks with Mike Hurst. Is the name unfamiliar? He produced this, the first and original recording of The First Cut is the Deepest by PP Arnold 44 years ago. The song was written by Cat Stevens, but technically Cat's release was later and so is a cover of his own song. Hurst produced both. PP Arnold is backed by a band who later became known as The Nice. And what ever happened to Mike Hurst? A "favourite tracks" piece follows later today and in a week or two the full Mike Hurst Story.



UPDATE: Mike Hurst's All time favourite tracks on WAVELENGTHS 2

Labour's appeasement of Libya goes back, way back.

Labour did plenty of deals with Libya

by Wrinkled Weasel

The wires are alive tonight with reports that a former Libyan Justice Minister has claimed that the country's leader, Col Gaddafi ordered the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 and also says he has proof that not only did Gaddafi order it, he ordered the freed suspect, al-Megrahi to place the bomb.

Well, there are many ways to look at this development. Perhaps it is no surprise to some. Perhaps, the source of this has an interest in gaining a place of safety somewhere, perhaps even the USA. Certainly it will play well over there.

I have a long memory. I remember WPC Yvonne Fletcher. Interestingly, the name of Jack Straw returns to the world of murk and grubby pragmatism once more. In 2009, The Times published a story that a deal was done between Straw and the Libyan government over the death of the police woman, for whom no one was ever charged. This is what the article said

The Libyan killer of a British policewoman will never be brought to justice in Britain after a secret deal approved by Jack Straw.
The Foreign Office bowed to Libyan pressure and agreed that Britain would abandon any attempt to try the murderer of WPC Yvonne Fletcher, shot outside the Libyan embassy in London 25 years ago.
Anthony Layden, Britain’s former ambassador to Libya, said this weekend he had signed the agreement with the Libyan government three years ago, when Straw was foreign secretary. At the time Britain was negotiating trade deals worth hundreds of millions of pounds with Libya.
The deal followed a visit by Tony Blair, then prime minister, to meet Colonel Gadaffi in March 2004 after Libya announced that it was ending its nuclear weapons programme. 

Oh dear. What else would Labour have done to prop up its doomed economy? Sell their grandmothers? Tell Lies? It seems as if they were prepared to do anything to appease a despot and keep their own corrupt regime in power.

Sea Monsters

By Wolfy

I am an armchair seafarer with cred. I grew up in a seaside village in Connecticut where many old houses sported Widow Walks and I spent two years as an expat in Bermuda, which is as close to being at sea as one can get without actually sailing about . . . come to think of it, I recently read of the launching of the world’s largest cruise ship and it’s dimensions were practically the size of the island of Bermuda, so there you go. As a child I read Robin Lee Graham’s Dove, the tale of his five year solo sailing trip around the world and I dreamed of doing the same some day. I was obsessed with Jacques Cousteau, still am really, and I fully admit to fantasizing that I was aboard the Calypso during my days of Turtle Tagging in Bermuda (my Bermudian shipmates now know why I insisted they speak in French accents only).

I understand the strong desire to go to sea, despite the perils of seafaring. They told Columbus he would sail right off the edge of the earth didn't they? But he took to the waters with little trepidation. Since ancient times, tales of storms, sea monsters, and sirens have returned to land on the lips of sailors, and what good has it done? Has it thwarted others from setting sail? No! To the contrary, the fools keep coming. And for as long as men have been traveling the oceans, there have been pirates. Once people figured out that the ocean was a great way import and export, the pirates figured out the ocean was a great venue for thievery. 

Funny thing is, modern society seems to think that pirates are a thing of the past, only to be conjured in modern times by Johnny Depp and old scratchy films like Captain Blood. But yesterday’s news reminded the world that pirates are alive and well off the coast of Somalia and stretching far into the waters of the Indian Ocean. I have been fascinated with stories of Somalian Pirates for a couple of years now -- I won’t claim to have read every word written about them or to have solutions to the problem, but I will say that ultimately my interest in them is born of my wonder of the mystery of what happens on the sea. I used to listen to Harbor Radio when I lived in Bermuda and late at night one could hear the most horrendous dramas playing out: a sinking sail boat, a tanker caught in a storm, the airlifting of a mortally ill sailor . . . these were things that Land People knew nothing about. It was an unseen world.

Four Americans were murdered by Somali pirates yesterday and the story is still unfolding. What we do know is that their luxury yacht was captured by the pirates only a few days ago and then the U.S. Navy shadowed the yacht for many miles while attempting to negotiate the release of the American hostages. The New York Times tell us there was a breakdown in talks over money sometime early yesterday and “the situation quickly went south from there.” The Navy is claiming the pirates fired their weapons first and the pirates are claiming the Navy fired first. And now? The Navy is holding several Somali pirates prisoner on board a U.S. Naval ship and what they’ve got now is a Hot Potato.

I was amazed at comments in the New York Times and even among some of my Facebook friends. It quickly became apparent to me that this may be the first time people have read about pirates off the eastern coast of Africa -- kidnappings and hijackings have been occurring for many years now, but it took the killing of Americans to bring this international problem to the forefront in the States. There were calls to dispose of the pirates at sea and to commence air raids on Somali villages, “That’ll teach ‘em to mess with Americans!” There seems to be no collective memory of the failed U.S. mission in Mogadishu in 1993 (see Black Hawk Down) and no logical thought put into these reactionary solutions.

Slaughtering them wouldn't be right, bringing them to the U.S. for trial wouldn't be right either. They should be returned to the Somali government to stand trial really and again, this is another non-solution, because the Somalis won't try them. Somalia needs to be held responsible for the actions of their citizens in international waters. The U.S. and countries who use the Indian Ocean need to rely heavily on diplomatic tools to solve Somalia's problems. This is a problem of poverty at it's base, plain and simple. And so far the Somali pirates have been doing alright for themselves -- they earned a cool  £650,000 for the safe return of British pleasure sailors Paul and Rachel Chandler back in November.

Death means little or nothing to the pirates. If we kill them, more will take their place. Showing strength and force won't frighten them -- there must be a concerted effort to work with Somalia to stop the trend of piracy. The Wikipedia entry on Somali Pirates sums up the answer to this plight quite nicely, “Ultimately, many authors argue that the long term solution to Somali piracy is political securitisation. Governments would have to employ socioeconomic measures such as poverty alleviation and good governance in order to deal with piracy (and even terrorism) effectively. In particular, a sustainable solution requires the establishment not only of effective governance but also the rule of law, reliable security agencies, and alternative employment opportunities for the Somali people.”

And what do I think of the Americans who lost their lives yesterday? It is a fact that they were fervent missionaries and when I think of missionaries, only one image comes to mind -- yop, Klaus Kinski in Fitzcarroldo, a little feverish German in a white linen suit and Panama hat dead set on bringing opera to the people of the Amazon. He succeeds in maiming, murdering, and going completely insane. And he destroys a perfectly lovely riverboat in the process. The voice of Caruso tames no wild beast, especially not Kinski. So there you have it, I believe missionaries are just as extreme as pirates and terrorists are.

I read a news release in Reuters last year that caused me to write a short story about the pirates: “Somalia’s transitional government called on Russia on Friday to explain why it had cut 10 Somali pirates adrift in the Gulf on Aden without navigation equipment or much hope of survival. Russian forces last week stormed a hijacked oil tanker in a rescue operation that killed one pirate. Russia said 10 others arrested were later set loose aboard one of the small vessels they used in the attack. A military official said they were stripped of their weapons and navigation equipment. Russian media later quoted a military source saying the pirates were now likely dead.“

The story, I Was A Pirate, was my attempt to be there, get inside the skin of a pirate. Flawed as the story might be, it accomplished something very important for me personally -- it allowed me to see both sides, which I can only hope the powers that be can do in the next few days. The Russians scuttled their captured pirates without any international remorse, but the U.S. Navy won’t be able to so simply dispose of their booty of pirates. I suppose many thought new pirating would be discouraged by the Russian’s actions of last year, but it was only a temporary solution, a singular solution for that particular incident. The world will be watching the Navy over the next few days, as will I. Whatever happens, I predict pirating will prevail for some time to come.

A perv's guide to literature

Those of you with literary bent (I have started already) may find the following, shall we say, vocabulary, useful in defining a genre that hitherto has been neglected. Those who are new to our country and wish to take part in its rich and diverse language will also benefit.

Lunge. verb. Can refer to that moment when a gentleman or lady moves towards a part of another gentleman or lady.
Gusset. noun. Parts of clothing that conceal or support naughty bits.
Nomenclature: A collection of naughty words
Quiver: verb. An action, perhaps involuntary, caused by touching or almost touching.
Kumquat: noun. Although many fruits and vegetables are deemed pervy because of shape, this one rests on its name alone.
Fagottini: Often confused with a type of pasta. Quite a lot of Italian words sound rude, so you can always rely on using one or two, such as pizzicato or even, vibrato. The latter has much going for it since it conceals the word, bra.
Muffler: Useful for keeping things warm
Futtock: Most parts of the body can sound funny if you have an imagination.
Crevice: A sprightly, portmanteau noun for any part of the body that may be rude.
Trouser: The single trouser, such as in the phrase trouser area.
Scunthorpe: More or less self-explanatory, as is Staines.
Bulge: Again, can be attributed to various rude bits.
Moist: It is a sad fact that most naughty parts of the body will be moist at some point, but you can use this to your advantage.
Flange: Not just a convenient guitar effect
Gyratory: Sally Traffic often slips "Hangar Lane Gyratory" into what sounds like a perfectly innocuous traffic bulletin.
Vestibule: All containers or areas are a rich source of perv delight.

There may be more....

McBride ll - Power Never Sleeps

by Wrinkled Weasel

Over at the Speccie, Fraser Nelson brings us an exclusive: Damien McBride, Brown's former ratfucker-in-chief has become Head of Media at CAFOD, the Catholic Church's overseas aid charity. Of course, this is just another stepping stone in Mr McBride's journey back to the kid of power and authority that henchmen like him live on. Before too long, he will be working at the Vatican for one of the Cardinals, and then, perhaps the conversation might go something like this:


Cardinal: Come in, Mr McBride...I've been expecting you.

McBride: Your Eminence.

Cardinal: We have a problem. World Poverty.

McBride: Would you like it....eliminated?

Cardinal: Yes, perhaps it would be better if Poverty was...taken care of. It has become a nuisance. Do you think you may be of assistance in this matter?

McBride: Is the Pope a.. erm, yes, Your Eminence. A few, shall we say, well placed emails will sort it.

Cardinal: Mr McBride, perhaps the details are best left to you. Oh and Damien, you will be pleased to know that I have dealt with the Guido situation.

McBride: Oh yes, your Eminence? Can I get on with it then?

Cardinal: Yes, and remember, my son, Illegitimis non carborundum

Comment Moderation

I regret that comment moderation has been applied to this blog due to the comments of anonymous bigots. It's a sad state of affairs, but I will not tolerate persecution of any community or comments that incite hatred and ignorance.

Breaking: Gadaffi en-route to Isle of Wight

GADAFFI FLEES TO COSTA DEL FAILED DESPOT by Wrinkled Weasel

Tonight sources in the small island on the South Coast of the UK (teletext) have claimed that the Libyan Leader and camping enthusiast has moved his tent and cadre of highly trained pneumatic guardswomen to the Isle of Wight. Speaking from Newport a speaker said that the Colonel will be accomodated at Carisbroke Castle, scene of King Charles the First's exile. Meanwhile, the Intenational Community have condemned the move, declaring that the Isle of Wight has become a haven for "Despots, brigands and Jet Harris, formerly of The Shadows". Local residents are known to have mixed feelings. "Well he seems like a nice chap, but the erection of tents and portaloos is strictly controlled on the Island after the trouble we had with hippies and Robert Stigwood", said a local, "And this time of year he risks the danger of getting his assets frozen".

NO2HS2

I must declare an interest. I am prejudiced against wasting £30 billion of public money to shave 33 minutes off the journey time between London and Birmingham but nothing or only a few minutes for other destinations. Travelling to the Continent will require a connection from Euston to St Pancras stations on  part of the commuter-standard North London Line .

The economics don't stack up and the environmental impact is horrendous. Why should people's homes and lives be wrecked to satisfy the hidden demands of The Trans European Rail Network . That's not merely the unspoken elephant in the room but the iron bonds to shackle the countries of Europe together. It looks good on a map (see p42 for the UK and p27 for the whole of Europe).

If £30 billion can be afforded to improve the UK's transport infrastructure then surely reinstating the public  transport links that feed into the main networks would make more sense economically, socially and evironmentally. This second and third level network was first cut in the Sixties by Dr Beeching, without a cheaper flexible alternative system to replace it, and now this year with the removal of local authority transport subsidies. 

Please update your Newspeak Dictionary

You will find the following quotes in the "About this Blog" tab:

Dialogue, as we are choosing to use the word, is a way of exploring the roots of the many crises that face humanity today. It enables inquiry into, and understanding of, the sorts of processes that fragment and interfere with real communication between individuals, nations and even different parts of the same organization. In our modern culture men and women are able to interact with one another in many ways: they can sing dance or play together with little difficulty but their ability to talk together about subjects that matter deeply to them seems invariable to lead to dispute, division and often to violence. In our view this condition points to a deep and pervasive defect in the process of human thought. (Bohm, Factor and Garrett 1991)

"If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed"
— Paulo Freire

People are hell bent on shutting down dialogue. Certain words have become so politicised that you are no longer able to say them. As a concession, you are only able to say them if you belong to the particluar sub-culture to which they refer. For example, there used to be a blog called "Suspect Paki". It was run by a Muslim. There is also a blog called "Trauma Queen" that is run by a gay para-medic.

These people have been party to a language hi-jack. They tell us that they can use a certain word, but I cannot. Thus, the basis of dialogue is slewed in favour of those who have more words at their disposal than me. There is somthing hostile about the way in which communities insist on having a language of their own. The two examples above are actually not very good, but they point to the primary problem, which is one of etymological  hegemony.

Abortion has recently gotten the same treatment. A Californian Congresswoman, writing in the Huffington Post, has declared that

Abortion is is a word employed by intolerant people to cast shame on women who choose it.

This statement fields no alternatives, or even a rationale, it is merely accompanied by a sob story. This is not surprising because all arguments emanating from the Politically Correct are cleverly designed to bypass rationality and go straight to emotion. The liberal elite have no real philosophy to deliver, merely rant and rhetoric and because their arguments are so weak they rely on shutting down debate.

The aim of the Newspeak Dictionary in Orwell's book is clear, as told by Orwell himself:
The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought -- that is, a thought diverging from the principles of IngSoc -- should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression  to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever.

So what I am saying is that whilst this hi-jacking of language may be justifiable on certain limited grounds, it does nothing to further dialogue.

We must be careful; people use terms that are dangerous and so cliched that they will only be taken in subliminally. I notice that Brian, in his post below, slips in one or two. His use of the term "religious nutter societies" offends not only me, but they will be something of a blow to the many religiously based organisations who have fought to make our society a better one.

Not all religious people are nutters. The "nutters" pushed for the abolition of slavery. The "nutters" have huge medical missions overseas who deal with anything from cataract operations to HIV/AIDS. The "nutters" refused to fight and instead volunteered for dangerous non-combatant duties during WW1 and WW2. The "nutters" are behind organisations like the Salvation Army, who provide, among other things, help to street prostitutes.

So, please don't tolerate etymological terrorism. Please do not slip in cliches that are not only offensive but actually highly inflammatory and hate-inspiring. If you tolerate this, one day, you will not only not notice what's going on, you will no longer have the words to express it.

Dave, This Is Stupid

David Cameron plans to let private companies, charidees, religious societies bid to run  public services

In theory, it's a good idea until one remembers the sod off or buy attitude of our utilities that factor a percentage of disgruntled customers (the churn rate) into their business plans. If "your call is important" they would employ more call-handlers and if they really cared about providing good service and keeping your business they would be English speakers.

The future will be dominated by foreign-owned companies intent on using Rip-Off Britain as a milch cow to brighten their domestic balance sheets. The costs of the services will increase, what you receive will fall  and the government can wash its hands (or wipe them on the back of its trousers, more like) and  claim it's not their fault, make a complaint to the national service regulator, OffUK.

The contracts will be like a honey pot to international organised crime wishing to launder its money through front companies.  Look at the multi-£ billion farce of carbon-trading credit thefts.  Digressing, I find it hypocritical that the very people who rant about privatising air rave about doing the same for carbon. They're both molecules that cannot be owned but for one some very clever-clever financial types have monetised it for their masters' evil bidding. And what if an ultra religious group sets up a company to run the contraceptive and abortion service with all the service standards box-ticked and then goes into voluntary liquidation, thereby achieving its concealed aim of removing choice?

This isn't to say that our public services are good at the moment. By and large they are shit, mismanaged by incompetents with two aims, to maximise their salaries and impose their PC bigotry on us. As a result, the staff are inadequately trained, demotivated, lack proper leadership and inspiration and are often poorly-paid.

The solution is not to offload the public services but to re instill, preferably with a reign of merciless terror over the upper ranks, the public service ethos. Public service is boring but if done well is satisfying. Reform public services, don't abdicate responsibility. Eric Pickles, the Communities and Local Government Secretary (change that daft title to Minister of Municipal Works) is the very image of the great Alderman Albert Foodbotham of Bradford (I live in Peter Simple's World for part of the year). Go to it Eric, rattle your chain and thump your desk. Action this day!

Update: I have removed the word nutter, meaning extremist, from the phrase religious nutter societies. I have no problem with moderate religious societies like, for example, The Salvation Army, just the extremist sects who promulgate hate like that political nutter party, the BNP. Glad that's clarified things.

Pictures - You need no more.

All I will add is that in the Top picture, Gadaffi has a throne of Gold Leaf and Brocade, and Blair has a white plastic garden chair that looks as if it cost £2.50 at B&Q. A Clever, if slightly obvious metaphor.

The Moment

What physicists are working towards, although not all of them know it, is that solidity exists only in the fraction of time known as the moment and the moment is real only phenomenologically. You recall your chair as solid throughout the time you have been sitting on it but what you recall are the moments in which it was solid. Its solidity is a bridge to the future which is constantly collapsing just behind the moment and passing into being just ahead of it.

Where is the solidity of your chair a fraction of a second ago? Where is that now? To illustrate this arcing away of reality in all dimensions from the moment or reality coalescing toward it consider the moment represented as a magnet, with the force lines round it as both the decay and coalescence patterns of the phenomenological moment, which know neither past nor future.

Trouble is, you’ll still have to eat and pay bills. Those moments do not arc away. Sleeping rough feels solid all the time.

They never stop being our kids

If you are old enough to have grown up children, then this is for you. Photos by Pepper.

 

 

 Pictures by David B Pepper

http://www.davidbpepper.co.uk/

http://davidbpepper.blogspot.com/

Hypocrisy or Stupidity

Members of the Primate Order Considering Taxation Reform

Labour MP Chuka Umannu of the Treasury Select Committee is moaning that Barclays only paid the equivalent of 3% of its profits in Corporation Tax last year. The rate is 28%. Apparently, Barclays offset their losses from the previous year against the tax bill. That is a bad thing for the Left as Tax is a Good Thing because it means that Town Hall Chief Executives and Diversity Coordinators can have salaries competitive with Premier League footie players.

So it follows that the tax system should be altered to remove any loopholes or allowances. Er, the tax code more than doubled in length between 1997 and 2010 when Labour were in power and it's the longest in the world. It's sooo hard to solve a problem when there's only thirteen years available.

That would be the Barclays that didn't need bailing out with taxpayers' money, the Barclays whose President and Group Chief Executive, Bob Diamond, popular Lord Mandelson claimed was the unacceptable face of capitalism a month before the election last yearand then helped prepare for a Treasury Select Committee grilling in January this year.

Why doesn't Chuka Umannu demand that Anthony Charles Lynton Blair opens the curtains on his network of companies and partnerships to ensure he pays every last penny of tax due? After all, he's "a kind of straight kind of guy" with nothing to hide from his Cabinet.



It's suddenly gone very quiet.

in perpetuity

It takes the Weasel a long time to figure things out. For example, lying. People tell lies, and some people lie all the time as a sort of default, but for ages it never occurred to me that this happened. I still don't get it really, which is why I have bought so many bad cars from dodgy dealers and why, after responding to several offers in my email, my penis is still only three inches long.

What I wanted to mention though, was a conclusion I came to about t'internet.

A year ago, this blog was trundling along, but I became frustrated by an erroneus precept; that whatever I wrote about, whatever profound thoughts or revelations were committed to this blog, it was all ephemeral. Not anymore. You see, through my dimwitted techno fog I began to notice a remarkable thing. Stuff I wrote, no, dashed off, ages ago is being accessed. Now, you might think it was the kind of post that included key search words (you know the kind and I don't want the traffic) but it isn't! Take a look again at the side bar. Presently you will see a piece about The Alan Parsons Project. It was just one of those posts and I did it on a day when I thought I may as well rather than not. No big deal, no real master plan.

The reason that the APP post has appeared on the side bar is that somebody somewhere has posted it in a forum, or facebooked it or tweeted it or a combination of all three. That post, that, between you and me, I did not give an enormous amount of thought to, has come back to haunt me.

So folks, I have learned my lesson after seven years of blogging. What I write now will be here (wherever that is) for bloody ever. What I write will be read, considered, laughed at and derided, long after I am gone.

And do you know what? In a hundred years time, some biographer or chronicler of "blogs" will assert, with some authority, that Wrinkled Weasel had a three-inch penis.

Bernie has a watching brief on Bahrain F1GP

Ecclestone:We have never been involved in religion or politics

With protests in Libya, Bahrain and Yemen, three of the most repressive regimes in the Middle East, and the UN's Human Rights chief now wading in to condemn the violence against protestors the area is fast becoming a troublesome problem for Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One's big (little) daddy.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay says security forces responded in an "illegal and excessively heavy-handed" manner against peaceful demonstrators.
In a statement issued by her office Friday, she condemned the use of live ammunition against protesters in Libya, the use of electric tasers and batons in Yemen, and the use of military-grade shotguns in Bahrain.
Pillay says "particularly egregious are the targeted attacks on journalists, lawyers, human rights defenders and even, in the case of Bahrain, doctors and medical personnel attending to injured protesters".

(Washington Post)

A recent race at the Bahrain circuit had to be cancelled because medical attendants were too busy elsewhere dealing with less mechanical carnage. Which poses a problem for Ecclestone who is reportedly watching and waiting. There is a time limit on this though. In a week's time he will have to make a decision. The race weekend begins 11th March and the teams need to be there with all of their equipment and drivers a week before that for testing.

This may appear not to amount to a hill of beans, given the political state of play, but whether Bernie likes it or not, a lot of people will be watching to see if there is linkage, tacit support for those "egregious" attacks. There is no doubt that had this been a game of cricket, public opprobrium would have caused an abort. Financially, of course, a cricket tour is a minnow and GP1 is a behemoth. Bernie elects to turn a blind eye to politics and religion: "We've never been involved in religion or politics. We've never made a decision on this. It's not for us to run a country", he says.

Countries like Bahrain need all the international credibility they can get. Given the nationalistic nature of events like the Grand Prix, I cannot help wondering if Bernie is burying his head in all that desert sand.

WW loses control of blog

Democracy is a pain. It is worse than listening to other people until it is your turn to talk. The problem with democracy is that it creeps up on you while you are not looking. And anyway, some people don't play the game according to the rules. Not only that, democracy has a fatal flaw; it plays into the hands of the mob. If, for example, we allowed genuine democracy, that is, one person one vote, on everything, then hanging would be back on the agenda and possibly free fags and booze.

My problem is this. I have recently been joined on the blog by two co-contributors. Sadly, they have turned out badly because they insist on thinking for themselves and in some cases, even arguing with me. I am actually in a minority in my own little world and I risk a coup d'état from within.

Take a look at our side bar. You will see a list of "popular posts". I have no control over these because they are generated by some nasty little algorithm that prefers Royal Wedding stories and costume dramas over the proper stuff we do. And of course it is self fulfilling; the longer these posts stay in the charts, the more people will read them. Now I know why Right Said Fred felt so upset about Brian Adams.

When you give freedom to people, they go to the sweet shop and demand all the Fruit Salads and Candy Prawns in the store. When you give freedom to people they get punch drunk and start ordering pizzas with weird toppings. I never gave my kids any choice when they were little, of food or what they could wear or where they could go. And now they hate me. Actually I didn't and they don't. What I did not have was that thing where you go to someone's house and they say "would young Weasel like a sandwich", and I say "Young Weasel only has brown bread and it must be buttered on one side and by the way is that lettuce cruelty free?" That way lies entourages and a special assistant who blows coke up your ass.

The difficulty with sudden, catastrophic democracy and freedom in general is that it can be ugly and sometimes does not serve the best interests of those who seek it. I am not entirely convinced they even know what they truly want and when they get it if they will be happy. Revolutions can be ugly and may just replace one despotic regime with another.

Ah well, it is time for another generation to fight for causes. As Wordsworth said, The Child is the Father of the Man...France (at the beginning of the Revolution) lured me forth. Wordsworth wanted to be where the action was because he did not trust the media:

Like others, I had skimmed, and sometimes read
With care, the master pamphlets of the day;
Nor wanted such half-insight as grew wild
Upon that meagre soil

And so the spirit of revolution rolls on in the hearts and minds of all who hold truth and justice above some flawed invention of humankind. I am glad I have lost control.

Faces of the Egyptian Revolution

DREW CORNICK REPORTS FROM CAIRO:

I initially decided to come to Cairo, when I heard that the revolution had started. Having been on the front lines of many large scale social issue protests in the states, I thought it was time to broaden my horizons, and what better chance than with a Revolution; and quite a peaceful one at that. Also coinciding with the onslaught of the revolution, I came up with the concept Project Uprising, which I am hoping to evolve into a community of activists and story tellers from around the world who will focus on the social issues affecting them, and provide support and exposure for their photos and stories; and this seemed like a great way to start. 

I arrived in Cairo 3 days before Mubarak officially stepped down, I should have been here a day earlier, but Lufthansa had cancelled my flight due to low ticket sale volume. And had tickets not been more expensive, I would have been here at least a week earlier, but since I am financing my own trip, I had to make certain concessions.

I have only been hassled one time, by only one guy in his early 20's on the night Mubarak resigned. Strangely enough he was a protest supporter but, apparently he had a bit of nationalist sentiment. However, when he had confronted me, in Arabic, nearly 10 other protesters surrounded him and told him to piss off, and escorted me away saying, "Everything is going to be alright, and Thank you for being here, and welcome to Egypt." It was truly remarkable, that complete strangers came to my rescue. Apart from that guy, I have been welcomed with open arms and open hearts. One protester was so delighted that I took his photo, he gave me his scarf as a gesture of appreciation.

Another remarkable thing is that, for the most part Egypt is completely united presently. Men, women, children, seniors, Muslims, and Christians, are all standing together, getting to know each other and re-building their communities.

"I actually feel safer here, than I do in Los Angeles."

People from home ask me all the time, don't you feel scared, or that you are in harm's way, and in all honesty, I have never felt safer before. The people that are out protesting are really trying to protect members of the press, as they want to get their stories out.

While there have been a few isolated incidents of reporters in harm’s way; you could count them on one hand, you have to realize that throughout this revolution, there have been over 5,000 reporters, journalists, photographers, videographers, bloggers, and technical support staff here, so even 10 people getting harassed is less than 1% of the population of the media here in Cairo. None-the-less, I play it safe and very pragmatically, and try not to draw a whole lot of attention to myself, but that can be rather difficult, traveling around with a large digital SLR wrapped around my neck.

When I pull out my camera to shoot, I try to look for not only visually stunning shots, but shots that are really going to move people. I have started shooting, what I call the "Faces of the Egyptian Revolution," which is a collection of close up shots of individuals who have partaken in the revolution. However, anything that shows life in a different perspective that the typical life of most people in the metropolitan western world, such as tanks and armed soldiers lining the streets, and impoverished protesters, who have nothing to lose and have been out in Tahrir since the beginning. Ultimately, anything that is going invoke some kind of emotional response to the photo.

Drew Cornick is a photo-journalist and activist who lives in Los Angeles, California. 

All pictures © Drew Cornick 2011